770 "No Men in Women's bathrooms" defeats Gay/Trans lobby in Houston; Germain Greer denies sex-changes

"No Men in Women's bathrooms" defeats Gay/Trans lobby in Houston;
Germain Greer denies sex-changes

Newsletter published on 6 November 2015

(1) Gays attack Germaine Greer for saying Men who have sex changes do
not become Women
(2) Cardiff Students want Feminist Germaine Greer disinvited from Campus
(3) Germaine Greer Is A Hateful Bigot
(4) Germaine Greer ‘Should Be Punished’ for saying Trans Women Not Women
(5) Houston voters reject LGBT rights proposal in referendum
(6) No Men in Women's bathrooms - this slogan beat the Gay lobby in Houston
(7) Houston protects its Women, in defeat for Political-Correctness
(8) Schools Hesitate at Bathrooms for Transgender Students
(9) No Evidence Of a 'Gay Gene'

(1) Gays attack Germaine Greer for saying Men who have sex changes do
not become Women

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-new-bigots/17590

The New Bigots

It isn’t Germaine Greer who’s bigoted – it’s those who want to destroy her.

30 October 2015

There is a dark, twisted irony to the witch-hunting of Germaine Greer
over her ‘transphobia’, over her view that men who have sex changes do
not become women. Which is that those who are raging against Greer for
being a ‘hateful bigot’ actually fit the description of bigot far better
than she does. Bigotry, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary,
is ‘intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself’.
There could be no more apt tag for those calling for Greer to be
expelled from polite society for her opinions on trans issues. They are
displaying an alarming intolerance to someone who has the temerity to
think differently to them; they are being truly bigoted.

The moral crusade against Greer has provided a disturbing snapshot of
the new intolerance. What started life as another Stepford Student
effort to have a controversial speaker kept off campus, when students at
Cardiff University tried to get Greer’s lecture on women and power
cancelled on the basis that she has ‘dangerous’ views on trans issues,
quickly escalated into something far darker, more unstable. There’s now
a wide-ranging effort to have Greer branded unfit for all public life,
not just Cardiff. Her ideas ‘have no place in a civilised society’, we
are told. She’s been labelled a ‘ranter’ and ‘hateful’, even by
feminists and gay-rights activists who might once have been her allies.
Kellie Maloney, boxing promoter turned trans spokesperson, caused much
excitement in the Twittersphere when she ominously demanded Greer be
‘punished’ for her views.

The insult being hurled at Greer is that she’s a bigot. ‘Germaine Greer
is a hateful bigot’, says one headline. The New Statesman has a piece
casually asserting that Greer has ‘bigoted views’ and that we shouldn’t
be surprised if people ‘protest and demonstrate when bigots speak’. The
American feminist Roxane Gay says Greer is ‘bigoted and full of hate’
and says ‘I honestly don’t know why she’s being included [in media
discussion]’. Paris Lees, Vice writer and self-styled representative of
all trans people, accuses Greer of practising ‘40 years of bigotry’.
Lees says Greer is a ‘vile bigot’, and ‘exposing her bigotry’ is more
important than the discussion about freedom of speech.

That the hounders of Greer can call her a bigot in one breath and then
suggest she has no place in the media or polite society in the next
suggests they don’t only need a lesson in what freedom of speech means —
they also need a dictionary. For bigotry means one pretty simple thing:
intolerance of those who think differently to oneself. A bigot is not
simply a nasty person, or a racist, or an ‘Islamophobe’, or a really
opinionated, obstinate person — it’s a person who is ‘intolerant towards
those who hold different opinions’. As the authors of Values, Violence
and Our Future put it, ‘What distinguishes bigots is that they are
intolerant of [persons] who hold conflicting beliefs or opinions’. This
is why ‘intolerance is fundamental to bigotry’.

The real bigotry in Greergate is coming, not from Greer, but from the
mob of tweeters, trans activists, student leaders and liberal
journalists who are trying to destroy a woman’s reputation because they
don’t like her opinions. In fact, Greer is being tolerant. Yes, she may
use fruity, Aussie language, insisting that ‘just because you lop off
your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a fucking woman’. But,
as she says, this is ‘my opinion, not a prohibition’. She says she would
never stop people from having sex-change surgery: ‘Carry on if that’s
what you think it is you want to do.’ This is not intolerance of others’
opinions or ways of life, which is what bigotry means; on the contrary,
it is the height of tolerance to support the right of people to say or
do things you don’t like or understand. The intolerance, the bigotry,
belongs to those who want Greer off campuses, off TV and out of
‘civilised society’ because she has unfashionable opinions. Paris Lees
is the bigot, not Germaine Greer.

This new bigotry disguised as liberalism is running riot today. In fact,
in an authoritarian, linguistic twist that will have Orwell spinning in
his grave, bigotry is now most commonly enforced under the guise of
tackling bigotry. So anyone who opposes gay marriage is branded a
‘bigot’, when in fact it’s the branders, who cheer as people are sacked
from their jobs or hounded off campuses for opposing gay marriage, who
are behaving bigotedly. Gay-rights activists who campaign for bans on
Jamaican dancehall music or Christian adverts for gay-conversion therapy
pose as warriors against bigotry, yet in seeking to crush opinions that
differ to theirs they behave like bigots. Having the wrong opinions on
everything from Islam to multiculturalism to climate change can earn you
the label of ‘bigot’, and people will demand that you be No Platformed,
or twitch-hunted, or in some other way elbowed out of polite society —
the brilliant, ugly irony being that it is the idea that certain
opinions are so wrong that they must be hushed or crushed which is the
very definition of bigotry. The idea that there is one right way of
thinking and the demonisation of anyone who dissents is the bigotry of
our age: the bigotry not of religion, but of the right-on.

These New Bigots who have the gall to present themselves as warriors
against bigotry are having a really destructive impact on free, open and
rational debate. They chill public discussion, dumb down academic life,
and incite self-silencing among those who have unpopular views and who
know that expressing them could lead to the loss of their jobs, the loss
of public platforms, or, in Greer’s case, the potential loss of a
lifetime’s reputation of serious thought and social agitation. I’m not a
massive fan of Greer’s ideas — though I admire her sparky writing — but
here’s the scary thing: if even someone of her stature can be hounded
like this, what earthly chance do other people have to say what they
believe but which the New Bigots won’t like?

(2) Cardiff Students want Feminist Germaine Greer disinvited from Campus

https://reason.com/blog/2015/10/23/cardiff-students-want-feminist-germaine

Cardiff Students Want Feminist Germaine Greer Disinvited from Campus and
You Already Know Why

Doesn't agree with modern left on transgender issues

YoutubeYoutubeAnother feminist intellectual finds herself in the
crosshairs of the safe-spacers: Germaine Greer, a feminist academic and
author, is scheduled to give a lecture at Cardiff University in Wales
next month, but students are circulating a petition demanding the
cancellation of the talk.

That’s because Greer, a self-proclaimed Marxist anarchist who opposes
hierarchy and capitalism, is nevertheless out of step with the modern
left on transgender issues: she does not recognize “men who believe that
they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it” as women,
according to her 1999 book, The Whole Woman.

I don’t share these sentiments about the transgender community, though I
would relish the opportunity to have my own views on the subject
challenged by someone as knowledgeable as Greer. Leftist Cardiff
students, on the other hand, couldn’t care less—their minds are already
made up on the subject, and anyone who dares to disagree should be
chased of campus by a pitchfork-wielding mob.

The petition, which urges Cardiff to disinvite Greer, labels her views
“problematic and hateful” and maintains that her mere presence on campus
would be “dangerous”:

     Greer has demonstrated time and time again her misogynistic views
towards trans women, including continually misgendering trans women and
denying the existence of transphobia altogether.

     Trans-exclusionary views should have no place in feminism or
society. Such attitudes contribute to the high levels of stigma, hatred
and violence towards trans people - particularly trans women - both in
the UK and across the world.

     While debate in a University should be encouraged, hosting a
speaker with such problematic and hateful views towards marginalised and
vulnerable groups is dangerous. Allowing Greer a platform endorses her
views, and by extension, the transmisogyny which she continues to
perpetuate.

     Universities should prioritise the voices of the most vulnerable on
their campuses, not invite speakers who seek to further marginalise them.

On the contrary, speakers who provoke discussion and upset the dominant
way of thinking about an issue are exactly the kinds of people worth
bringing to campus. As Spiked editor and Reason contributor Brendan
O’Neill put it in his writeup of the Greer controversy:

     The Cardiff censors say Greer’s ideas are ‘problematic’. That is
what the PC say instead of ‘haram’. Well, we need more problematic
people. A problem is a question to be answered, an obstacle to be
navigated, which is exactly what students ought to be doing. Student
bureaucrats’ fear of anything ‘problematic’ sums up how philistine,
dogmatic and illiberal they have become.

(3) Germaine Greer Is A Hateful Bigot

http://globalcomment.com/germaine-greer-is-a-hateful-bigot/

Posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2015 at 9:47 am

Author: s.e. smith

Noted transphobe and feminist theorist Germaine Greer has yet again
lurched into the newsweek with trenchant and scintillating commentary on
the trans experience, via dehumanising and misgendering comments about
Caitlyn Jenner, one of the most high profile trans women in the United
States — so high profile, apparently, that even Australians feel fit to
police her gender. Her comments were made in the wake of a petition
requesting that an invitation to speak at Cardiff University be revoked
in light of her long history of transphobic commentary, and she went in
deep when it came to reminding the world that trans women fail utterly
at being women, and are indeed little more than castrated men, a point
of view she’s been helpfully advancing since 1970’s The Female Eunuch,
which crystallised her views on trans women and widely propagated them
within the radical feminist movement. Greer’s work has done immeasurable
harm to transgender women, and her school of trans-exclusionary radical
feminism has gained a growing foothold in a culture where transmisogyny
continually puts the lives of transgender women at risk.

She’s become a TERF figurehead and leader, and her decision to cleave
hard to the line has ensured that the movement has gained followers in
future iterations of feminism. So long as Greer and her ilk continue to
receive accolades and public attention, so too will their ideas, which
are validated every time an adoring public quivers with delight over her
latest vomitorious utterances. Greer, determined to police gender and
culture, is a disgrace to feminism on an absurd number of levels. It’s
heartening to see mainstream feminism finally pushing back against her
hateful propagation of transphobia, but the current incident unfolding
in Wales is a reminder that somehow, the privileged always manage to
become besieged victims when criticised, and those speaking out become
the evil, cruel, mean antagonists in the story — how dare they censor an
old woman?

Earlier this year, Greer attracted considerable negative attention over
transphobic comments made at Cambridge as well as her attack on a more
inclusive, intersectional model of feminism. She’d actually left
Cambridge previously rather than endure the apparently unimaginable
torment of serving alongside a transgender fellow — her vitriolic
attacks on Rachael Padman were unsuccessful, and the clearly
dissatisfied Greer was back with a considerable axe to grind. Tellingly,
her furious campaign against Padman took place in the context of a
lengthy career of actively hunting and outing trans women, often in an
attempt to destroy their careers and reputations. The result was
considerable isolation for women afraid of networking with each other or
being open about gender for fear of becoming targets — and a similar
tactic is used by one of Greer’s disciples, Julie Bindel, who is
frequently granted space in the UK media for reasons that defy
explanation. TERFs turn transness into a stigma, something to be hidden
and hated, cutting into any hope of social acceptance for trans women.

The campaigner clearly has a very decided vision of what a woman looks
like, and very few women can perform to her expectations — and when they
don’t, she hurls sexism and misogyny at them alongside transphobia,
which she hotly claims ‘doesn’t exist.’ Her insistence on the right to
define what gender is, and what it should look like, has become a
rallying cry for TERFs like her, who draw upon her lengthy history of
rhetoric to perpetuate incredibly oppressive social attitudes.

At the same time that Greer purports to be advocating for equal rights
and for women, she’s a fan of vicious commentary and her ‘sharp wit’ at
the expense of other women, particularly trans women, engaging in the
most vile form of punching down rather than striking up at privilege.
Even as she insists that trans women are enjoying some sort of special
social privilege by virtue of really being men, she refuses to
acknowledge the stark statistics on life as a trans women. Transgender
women are more likely to be beaten, sexually assaulted, murdered, and
discriminated against than their cis counterparts. They have difficulty
accessing social services, health care, and equal access to education.
They are discriminated against in housing, the workplace, and in public
accommodations from transit to domestic violence shelters. They
experience severe mental illness and homelessness at disproportionate
rates and are often forced to turn to sex work to finance the barest of
existences — including the ability to afford basic health care. Yet for
Greer, none of these things matter.

Greer was evidently deeply offended by Glamour’s groundbreaking decision
to honour Jenner with its Woman of the Year award, insisting that Jenner
was ‘stealing the limelight’ from other members of the Kardashian family
with her high-profile transition. (Setting aside the fact that a woman
who leads a life as public as Jenner’s is effectively forced into a
highly public and highly discussed transition, and thus must either
fight for privacy or surrender to the inevitable and grasp the situation
by the horns to openly confront transphobia and transmisogyny. Jenner’s
position was far from enviable, and she probably wishes she wasn’t
occupying such a huge percentage of Kardashian-related news.)

Greer insisted that Glamour was engaging in rank misogyny for honouring
a ‘man who [went] to these lengths to become a woman,’ reiterating her
long-held stance that transgender women are not women, despite all
evidence to the contrary, such as the fact that, er, they are. This
stance has been accompanied by incredibly crude commentary about
transgender women and their bodies, from a vagina sniff test to a claim
that they’re effectively men who mutilate themselves to become women to
comments about trans women being ‘ghastly parodies’ — though she appears
to be rather unclear on what sort of advantage this is supposed to
provide for transgender women, who endure continual social torment from
people exactly like her as a result of pursuing transition. In the case
of Jenner, she suggested that Jenner’s transition was some sort of bid
for attention — because going through a prolonged and painful public
transition is clearly a walk in the park and an easy way to turn heads.

Oh, but she assured critics, she doesn’t think that ‘men’ shouldn’t be
allowed to have ‘the surgery’ — she just thinks that transgender women
aren’t women. She is evidently unclear on how gender works, and that it
has nothing to do with ‘sex changes,’ as she refers to surgical
transition. A woman is a woman is a woman, no matter what her body looks
like, and the fact that some women pursue surgery to address gender
dysphoria has no bearing on the validity of their gender — they were
women before, they will be women after. Women who opt out of surgery (or
who are unable to access it due to transphobic health policy) are also
women. Women come in all shapes and sizes, with a huge variance of
appearances and a diversity of experiences, but not in Greer’s world.

Moreover, she had the absolute gall to insist that unless the university
could ‘guarantee her safety,’ she would decline to appear for her 18
November speech. The prospect of having her voluntarily opt out is, no
doubt, a pleasurable thought to many, but it also highlights the
absurdity with which transphobes rule the world. At the same time that
Greer is actively endangering trans women with her hateful comments and
reinforcement of social attitudes that lead to deaths, beatings,
torture, and discrimination, she’s playing the victim and suggesting
that she’s scared of the big bad trans women and people of other genders
working in solidarity with them.

Perhaps she has good reason to be afraid of ‘things being thrown at her’
— she was glitterbombed in 2012 over her transphobic views, and we can
only be sad that the incident didn’t lead her to decide to stop
appearing in public permanently, for Germaine Greer locked in a bunker
deep underground with no access to the outside world sounds like the
ideal outcome for almost everyone involved. Views as hateful as Greer’s
have no place in a civilised society.

(4) Germaine Greer ‘Should Be Punished’ for saying Trans Women Not Women

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/10/28/germaine-greer-punished-saying-trans-women-not-women-comments-like-holocaust-denial/

Germaine Greer ‘Should Be Punished’ For Saying Trans Women Not Women And
Comments ‘Like Holocaust Denial’

by Liam Deacon

28 Oct 201590

Kellie Maloney – previously Frank – the ex UKIP candidate and boxing
promoter, has said Germaine Greer “should be punished” and “dragged into
court” for stating that “trans women” are not women. The transgendered
star of the BBC’s new transgender sitcom compared the comments to
holocaust denial.

Last week, after students attempted to bar her from speaking at Cardiff
University, Mrs Greer was asked on BBC Newsnight if she understood why
the transgendered might feel hurt and “discriminated against” by her
comments. She replied:

“I’m not saying people should not be allowed to go through that
procedure [sex-change surgery]. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t make
them a woman. That happens to be my opinion, not a prohibition.”

Then this morning, on Sky News, Ms Maloney was asked what she “thought”
of Greer’s comments. She replied:

“If she had said that about another section of the community – Muslim
community, black community, or gay community – she would have been
dragged into court and punished for that,” she replied, adding: “She
should be punished for that.”

A comparable comment about the black community would be to say “I don’t
think white people who identify as black are black”, or, “race is
biological reality, not a social construct.”

Many people said as much after the recent cases of Rachel Dolezal and
Shaun King, on both sides of the Atlantic, and as yet, no one has been
“dragged” before a court for doing so.

Greer doubled down on her position in a statement given to the
VictoriaLIVE show on BBC Two. The veteran feminist said:

“… I do understand that some people are born intersex and they deserve
support in coming to terms with their gender but it’s not the same
thing. A man who gets his d*ck chopped off is actually inflicting an
extraordinary act of violence on himself.”

Following this, transgendered actress Rebecca Root, star of the BBC’s
‘Boy Meets Girl,’ the world’s first sitcom focused on a transgender love
story, waded in on Greer’s comments.

She said, “I’d like to see her say that to my face,” and that the
comments are the “sort of thing I’d equate with the worst of the gutter
press” before also comparing them to homophobia and racism and holocaust
denial.

“People have opinions about race and holocaust denial, and those opinion
are not given a platform,” she said.

(5) Houston voters reject LGBT rights proposal in referendum
http://newsdaily.com/2015/11/houston-voters-reject-civil-rights-measure-for-lgbt-community/

Houston voters reject civil rights measure for LGBT community

Wednesday, November 4, 2015 Jon Herskovitz for Reuters

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Voters in Houston, the fourth most populous
U.S. city, rejected a measure that have would banned discrimination
based on gender identity and sexual orientation, protections not
guaranteed under Texas law.

The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance was backed by outgoing Mayor Annise
Parker, the first open lesbian to be elected as mayor of a major U.S.
city and local business, while prominent Republicans and Christian
pastors rallied against the proposal also called HERO.

The ordinance would ban discrimination in city employment and city
services, city contracts, public accommodations, private employment and
housing based on criteria including an individual’s sexual orientation
and gender identity.

The political wrangling over the measure had gone on for more than a
year. Some conservative Christians saw it as an attack on their
religious liberties. Backers of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender (LGBT) community said it reflected the values of a modern
and multicultural city and was needed to stamp out bigotry.

Many opponents focused on a small part of the ordinance that they said
concerned the use of public bathrooms by transgender men and women. They
also said it could allow for sexual predators in public restrooms.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a Tea Party Republican, said in an
advertisement opposed to HERO: “It’s about allowing men into women’s
locker rooms and bathrooms. No woman should have to share a public
locker room or restroom with a man.”

Mayor Parker said after the vote, HERO’s defeat may have stained the
city’s reputation.

“This was a campaign of fear mongering and deliberate lies,” Parker said.

The measure won support from liberal groups and business leaders
including the Greater Houston Partnership, which has more than 1,200
member companies.

“As we work to attract businesses and talented professionals to our
region, they have made clear that they are seeking a community that is
welcoming, diverse and inclusive,” said Bob Harvey, president and CEO of
the Greater Houston Partnership.

Indiana and Arkansas this year revised religious freedom acts after
facing threats of boycotts and a firestorm of criticism from those who
said the measures would allow people to cite their religious beliefs as
reason to discriminate against the LGBT community.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

(6) No Men in Women's bathrooms - this slogan beat the Gay lobby in Houston
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/houston-lgbt-nondiscrimination-ordinance-rejected-voters-n456936

Nov 3 2015, 10:45 pm ET

Houston LGBT Nondiscrimination Ordinance Rejected by Voters

by The Associated Press

An ordinance that would have established nondiscrimination protections
for gay and transgender people in Houston failed to win approval from
voters on Tuesday.

The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance was rejected after a nearly 18-month
battle that spawned rallies, legal fights and accusations of both
religious intolerance and demonization of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender community.

Supporters of the ordinance had said it would have offered increased
protections for gay and transgender people, as well as protections
against discrimination based on sex, race, age, religion and other
categories.

Opponents of the ordinance, including a coalition of conservative
pastors, said it infringed on their religious beliefs regarding
homosexuality. But in the months leading up to Tuesday's vote, opponents
focused their campaign on highlighting one part of the ordinance related
to the use of public bathrooms by transgender men and women that
opponents alleged would open the door for sexual predators to go into
women's restrooms.

Democratic Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who is gay, and other supporters
of the ordinance had called this "bathroom ordinance" strategy highly
misleading and a scare tactic.

The ordinance was initially approved by the Houston City Council in May
2014 but a lawsuit to have residents vote on the measure eventually made
it to the Texas Supreme Court, which in July ordered the city to either
repeal the ordinance or put it on the ballot.

Tuesday's referendum drew attention from around the nation, with the
measure getting high-profile endorsements last week from the White
House, high-tech giant Apple and Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Rodham Clinton. The ordinance also had received support from
other members of Houston's religious community.

Campaign for Houston, which fought the ordinance, said opponents
included a diverse group of individuals, such as pastors from all
denominations and local and state elected officials.

On Monday, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had tweeted his support for
opponents, saying, "HOUSTON: Vote Texas values, not @HillaryClinton
values. Vote NO on City of Houston Proposition 1. No men in women's
bathrooms

(7) Houston protects its Women, in defeat for Political-Correctness

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/us/houston-voters-repeal-anti-bias-measure.html

Houston Voters Reject Broad Anti-Discrimination Ordinance

By MANNY FERNANDEZ and MITCH SMITH

NOV. 3, 2015

HOUSTON — A yearlong battle over gay and transgender rights that turned
into a costly, ugly war of words between this city’s lesbian mayor and
social conservatives ended Tuesday as voters repealed an
anti-discrimination ordinance that had attracted attention from the
White House, sports figures and Hollywood celebrities.

The City Council passed the measure in May, but it was in limbo after
opponents succeeded, following a lengthy court fight, in putting the
matter to a referendum.

Supporters said the ordinance was similar to those approved in 200 other
cities and prohibited bias in housing, employment, city contracting and
business services for 15 protected classes, including race, age, sexual
orientation and gender identity. Opponents said the measure would allow
men claiming to be women to enter women’s bathrooms and inflict harm,
and that simple message — “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms” — was plastered
on signs and emphasized in television and radio ads, turning the debate
from one about equal rights to one about protecting women and girls from
sexual predators.

“It was about protecting our grandmoms, and our mothers and our wives
and our sisters and our daughters and our granddaughters,” Lt. Gov. Dan
Patrick, a Republican, told cheering opponents who gathered at an
election night party at a Houston hotel. “I’m glad Houston led tonight
to end this constant political-correctness attack on what we know in our
heart and our gut as Americans is not right.”

The issue was one of a handful of high-profile initiatives across the
nation up for a vote on Tuesday, some of which had similar culture-war
undertones.

Ohio voters blocked a constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana for
both medical and recreational use. The decision was a setback for
cannabis supporters who saw the state as a potential bellwether on
legalization in the Midwest.

In Houston, the ordinance’s proponents — including Mayor Annise D.
Parker, local and national gay rights and civil rights groups and the
actress Sally Field — accused opponents of using fearmongering against
gay people, and far-fetched talk of bathroom attacks, to generate
support for a repeal. The ordinance, they noted, says nothing
specifically about whether men can use women’s restrooms.

The proponents’ defeat at the polls was a kind of personal blow to Ms.
Parker, a Democrat. Houston became the largest city in the United States
to elect an openly gay mayor when she won office in December 2009. Now
in her third and final term, Ms. Parker had pushed hard for the
ordinance and helped it gain endorsements from President Obama and
corporate giants like Apple.

Opponents of the measure — including Mr. Patrick, pastors of
conservative megachurches and the former Houston Astros baseball star
Lance Berkman — said the ordinance had nothing to do with discrimination
and was about the mayor’s gay agenda being forced on the city. They
denied that they had any bias against gay people, and said the ordinance
was so vague that it would make anyone who tried to keep any man from
entering a women’s bathroom the subject of a city investigation and fine.

(8) Schools Hesitate at Bathrooms for Transgender Students

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/us/as-transgender-students-make-gains-schools-hesitate-at-bathrooms.html

As Transgender Students Make Gains, Schools Hesitate at Bathrooms

By JULIE BOSMAN and MOTOKO RICHNOV. 3, 2015

CHICAGO — Asked to call a transgender boy by a male name he has chosen
for himself, teachers and administrators around the country have leaned
toward a simple response: Sure. Allow a high school student who was born
male but identifies as female to join the volleyball team? Fine.

But as transgender students assert themselves more, schools have
hesitated at the locker room and the bathroom. Many have developed
policies that require transgender students to use private changing and
showering facilities, drawing opposition from these students, their
parents and advocates who say the rules are discriminatory.

The Education Department on Monday gave school officials at a suburban
Chicago high school 30 days to resolve a dispute with a transgender
student who identifies as a girl and has sought to change and shower in
the girls’ locker room without restrictions; otherwise, the school risks
forfeiting Title IX funding. The confrontation was an echo of battles
nationwide, where the locker room and often the restroom are the stage
for a fierce fight over how extensively transgender students should be
accommodated.

What Is the Locker-Room Policy for Transgender Students at Your Child’s
School?

Are you aware of a transgender child at your child’s school? What are
the rules set around bathrooms and locker rooms, and how have the
conversations around that gone where you live? Join the conversation on
the Motherlode blog.

“I think it’s an issue that people are thinking about a lot,” said Thad
Ballard, the president of the Elko County school board in northeast
Nevada, which voted in September to keep transgender students out of
bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity.
He said the move was intended to preserve “the centuries-long tradition
of respecting the difference in the sexes.”

“When has it ever been appropriate for a biological boy or a biological
girl to be in the opposite restroom of their gender?” Mr. Ballard said.
“We’re all trying to think of the best way to protect the rights of all
of our students, whether they’re transgender or not.”

California, Washington, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York
and the District of Columbia have already adopted policies requiring
schools to permit transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms
based on the student’s gender identity. In Maine, the State Supreme
Court ruled last year that under the state’s antidiscrimination law, a
transgender girl could use the bathrooms and locker rooms for the gender
with which she identified.

Eleven other states have general antidiscrimination policies on the
books that might also protect the rights of transgender students in
schools, said Michael D. Silverman, executive director of the
Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.

But some state legislatures are trying to move in the opposite
direction. Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin have proposed a bill that
would bar transgender students from using bathrooms that correspond with
their gender identity, a measure that Democrats say is discriminatory.
In Minnesota in April, the State Senate, dominated by Democrats,
defeated a similar measure.

Some school districts have faced threats of legal action and federal
intervention if they exclude transgender students from the bathroom that
corresponds to their gender identity.

In Arcadia, Calif., the school district entered a settlement agreement
with the Department of Justice and the Education Department’s Office of
Civil Rights after a transgender student who identifies as male brought
a complaint about being forced to sleep in a separate camp cabin during
a middle school science outing. District officials worked with federal
officials to create a new policy that allows transgender students access
to all sex-segregated facilities based on the gender with which they
identify.

David Vannasdall, superintendent of Arcadia, a school district with
fewer than 10,000 students not far from downtown Los Angeles, said that
in assigning the student to a separate cabin, the district had followed
the advice of a lawyer who was anticipating the reactions of other
parents rather than simply working with the family of the transgender
student. “The problem is you have people making decisions from the basis
of fear and the extremes, and that’s never good for kids,” Mr.
Vannasdall said.

In California, the State Legislature passed a law two years ago
permitting transgender students to participate in sex-segregated
activities and use facilities that were consistent with their gender
identity in all schools. But opponents are mounting a plan to put an
initiative on the California ballot next fall that would direct all
students to use facilities that correspond with the gender on their
birth certificates.

“I am not questioning their sincerity,” said Karen England, spokeswoman
for Privacy for All, a group that is promoting the ballot initiative in
California. “But the reality of their biology is that their plumbing is
quite different, and I have a right to privacy, and I have the right for
my daughters and granddaughters to have the right to be in a bathroom or
a locker room without being exposed to the opposite gender.”

Jeff Johnston, an analyst at Focus on the Family, the conservative group
based in Colorado, said in an email that “girls should not have to risk
being exposed to boys in locker rooms, changing rooms and restrooms.”

School officials say that in cases where parents or students raise
concerns, they can work through them. In San Francisco, for example, a
group of Muslim students sought permission last year to pray during
break times and perform ritual cleansings in the bathrooms. But some of
them were concerned that if a transgender student entered the bathroom
at the same time, it would be inappropriate for the girls to share space
with a biological male.

“We talked about how this was a democracy and students have the right to
go to the bathroom,” said Kevin R. Gogin, director of safety and
wellness school health programs at the San Francisco Unified School
District. After discussions with the religious students, he said, they
agreed that they could seek privacy by using the private stalls for
their cleansing rituals.

In Los Angeles, where the district has had a policy allowing transgender
students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender
identity since 2004, Judy Chiasson, coordinator in the Human Relations,
Diversity and Equity Department for the Los Angeles Unified School
District, said that schools have had few complaints.

“All of our students tend to be pretty modest,” Ms. Chiasson said. She
added that unlike students in previous generations, even after physical
education classes or athletic practices, students today do not tend to
undress or shower in public facilities, and in bathrooms, students can
use private stalls. Because of this, she said, in many cases, students
do not even know whether another student is transgender or not.

A transgender student does not want “to invade anybody else’s privacy,”
Ms. Chiasson said. “She’s in the bathroom to do her business.”

The school district in Palatine, Ill., that was reproached by the
Education Department this week had required a transgender student to
change her clothes and shower separately from other students, causing
her family to raise the issue with federal officials. John Knight,
director of the L.G.B.T. Project of the American Civil Liberties Union
of Illinois, which represented her, said concerns over the presence of
transgender students in locker rooms “is a made-up issue.”

“The kids who are most vulnerable are the transgender students,” he
said. “If a boy who’s transgender is comfortable to be in a boys’
restroom, he should be allowed to be there.”

Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for
civil rights, said it is possible to protect the rights of all students
without forcing transgender students to use different facilities.

“The school’s responsibility is to respect who that person is,” Ms.
Lhamon said. “And the school’s responsibility is that they do not teach
discrimination, but do teach civic engagement along with the three R’s.”

Julie Bosman reported from Chicago, and Motoko Rich from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on November 4, 2015, on page
A14 of the New York edition with the headline: As Transgender Students
Make Gains, Schools Hesitate Over Bathroom Policies.

(9) No Evidence Of a 'Gay Gene'
http://www.dailywire.com/news/445/study-no-theres-no-evidence-gay-gene-pardes-seleh

Study: No, There's No Evidence Of a 'Gay Gene'

By: Pardes Seleh

October 15, 2015

An unpublished UCLA study challenging the societal "born this way" dogma
of homosexuality has already been gaining traction in the public media
since its presentation at an annual scientific conference last week.

The twin study conducted at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the
University of California, Los Angeles, finds that homosexuality may be
triggered by environmental factors after birth. The research uses an
algorithm covering epigenetic markers from several genomic sites of 37
sets of identical male twins to predict homosexuality in males, with 70
percent accuracy, as presented at the American Society of Human Genetics
2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore.

“The finding is highly controversial because it suggests that some men
are not born gay, but are turned homosexual by their surroundings,”
Sarah Knapton of Telegraph suggested.

The research attracted widespread criticism, from lay people who cry
"homophobe!" to experts who decry the study as "statistically
[in]significant."

Dr. Eric Vilain, an author on the study and director at the Institute
for Society and Genetics (ISG) at UCLA, has been championed as an LGBTQ
hero in many publications who misconstrued the study itself. Ironically,
he's also been scalded by politically correct leftists on issues of
transgenderism ever since he coauthored an op-ed in the LA Times last
May called “What should you do if your son says he's a girl?”

The op-ed, written by two award-winning intersex experts, challenged the
idea that adult transgenderism is inevitable for boys with gender
dysphoria, and encouraged parents to not be quick to assume that their
feminine-acting boys are gay.

     Gender dysphoric children have not usually become transgender
adults. For example, the large majority of gender dysphoric boys studied
so far have become young men content to remain male. More than 80%
adjusted by adolescence.

The op-ed also challenges Barack Obama’s statement last April, which
called for a ban on all LGBTQ conversion therapies. The op-ed stated
that some such therapies done by professionals could be useful in
“trying to help children avoid later medical stress,” and bear no moral
biases against transgendered people.

Dr. Vilain’s op-ed was attacked by readers of the LA Times, who took it
as an offense to the LGBTQ community.

“Good to see Fox News has bought the LA Times and forced them to publish
this bull $#!+," was one response.

"Shame on Eric Vilain," someone tweeted.

These attacks and other attacks on Dr. Vilain’s work are not only
morally outrageous because the content of his argument may offer insight
and psychological remedy to the sexually ambiguous, they also ignore Dr.
Vilain’s expert knowledge and personal contribution to intersex study in
the past. The author of this article has been a student of the ISG, and
can assert that Dr. Vilain has dedicated a large portion of his life
since to studying intersexuality and sexual development, receiving
numerous awards for his work, notably from NIH and the March of Dimes.

“There is often a confusion in the minds of young children between their
behavior and their identity,” he told The Daily Wire yesterday,
regarding his research. “If a young boy behaves in a female typical
fashion, he may be believe that he IS a girl. That is not the case. I
think that boys can behave in ways that seem very effeminate without
being encouraged in the idea that they are of the opposite gender.”

Dr. Vilain continued that while it is unknown what the best method for
raising "gender nonconforming" children would be, “one should be
cautious in immediately supporting social transition of children who are
non-conforming.”

He gave two reasons why he thinks that parents in the case of children
with genetic markers for potential homosexuality should not try to
enforce their children’s sexes with a definitive biological line. "One
is that even if there were genetic predisposition markers, they should
not be used as part of parenting or any kind of behavioral
intervention," he said. "The other is that there simply should not be
definitive line, because it does not exist.”

Ed Yong, a scientific journalist and blogger, published an article in
the Atlantic criticizing both the UCLA researchers and the American
Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) for misleading information which caused
many news publications to infer that they had discovered a "gay gene."

“The research was described badly in the press release and the ensuing
coverage,” Yong said this morning in an email. He insisted that the
research was "fundamentally flawed," though it had not mentioned a "gay
gene."

Dr. Dean Hamer, a geneticist currently in Hawaii, wrote in the New
Scientist that he had been the first to hypothesize that epigenetics, or
environmental factors affecting phenotypic expression, may play a role
in homosexuality. Dr. Hamer later tweeted to a colleague that he thinks
the ASHG had sent out their press statement on Vilain’s research without
consulting Vilain first, even though he was senior author and PI.

Nalini Padmanabhan, communications manager at the ASHG, insisted in an
email this morning that the ASHG has not misrepresented or commented
independently on Vilain’s research in any way, and that the ASHG press
release had simply represented the abstract sent to them by Vilain’s lab.

“Dr. Ngun, who is quoted directly throughout, worked with our office to
refine the draft press release and ultimately approved the final
version,” Padmanabhan said.

Regardless, the inferences drawn from ASHG’s press statement reflect a
stubborn desire to twist the pending study as one proving genetic
dominance over epigenetics. This is likely derived from a cultural fear
of the "homophobic" idea that homosexuality can be triggered by
environmental factors during a child’s upbringing.

Failure to acknowledge environmental factors as important triggers in
the upbringing of sexually dysphoric children is in itself a disservice
to the LGBTQ community, as it ignores possible helpful treatments and
can instead often result in a tragic series of self-identity crises,
severe mental illness, and in many cases, suicide.